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Pirelli Cyber Tire adds some smarts to your slicks

Pirelli Cyber Tire adds some smarts to your slicks

Tire monitors are nothing new, but Pirelli's taking the idea a step farther by inserting sensors and microchips directly into the tires themselves. The Cyber Tire and Cyber Tire Lean can measure pressure, temperature and vehicle load, sending the information along using RFID. The self-powered Cyber Tire Lean, which will hit the market first in 2010, embeds the sensors in strip glued to the inner lining of the tire and communicates in one direction only; the proper Cyber Tire with directly embedded sensors will arrive later, and is being billed as an "intelligent tire" that will interface with vehicle systems like ABS and traction control to "correct wrong behavior in advance." Sure, okay -- but please tell us all this stuff can get switched off when we need to do some wicked burnouts, okay?